510127 - ARCHAEOLOGY AND ART HISTORY OF ANCIENT WESTERN ASIA

insegnamento

ID:

510127

Durata (ore):

36

CFU:

SSD:

ARCHEOLOGIA E STORIA DELL'ARTE DEL VICINO ORIENTE ANTICO

Anno:

2025

Periodo di attività

Primo Semestre (22/09/2025 - 19/12/2025)

Obiettivi Formativi

Aim of the course is to introduce the students to the archaeology of western Asia, and to the critical discussion of the analysis of the archaeological evidence. The ultimate goal is to let them become aware of an early set of cultural traditions and become able to integrate this set of traditions in the wider discourse on memory and identities of the ancient Mediterranean and their ties to the modern world.

Prerequisiti

The previous attendance of courses in ancient western Asian studies, or of the pre-courses of ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and of ancient Mediterranean History offered in our program is not mandatory but strongly encouraged

Metodi didattici

The course will be taught as 18 meeting of lectures and seminar classes. Lectures will consist in frontal lessons with audio and video support requesting interaction and participation of students.
Seminar classes will consist in classes in which beside an hour of lecturing there will be an hour of discussion of a paper assigned to students for reading a week ahead.

Verifica Apprendimento

The final evaluation for students who participated in class is based on participation (20% = 6/30), oral exam (50% = 15/30), and ppt presented at the oral exam (30% = 9/30). Evaluation of students who did not attend classes will be based on the oral exam (50%), ppt presented at the exam (30%), and discussion of the make-up readings (20%).
The final exam will represent for all students the benchmark for defining their grade. The instructor will share with students a ppt, whose slides will represent the visual starting point to articulate a conversation on themes and monuments of AWA archaeology. The slides will be commented by the instructor during the course, and they are linked to the chapters of the handbook of R. Matthews (see above).

Testi

All students taking the course will be required to read and prepare for the final oral exam the following handbook:
R. Matthews, Archaeology of Mesopotamia, London 2003.

Students who will not participate in the seminar (Part 2), will be required to prepare for the final exam one chapter from each of the two books assigned here below:
R. Matthews & Ḥ. Fāz̤ilī Nashlī 2022. The Archaeology of Iran from the Palaeolithic to the Achaemenid Empire. Routledge: New York (one among chapters 7-11);
C. Glatz 2020. The Making of Empire in Bronze Age Anatolia: Hittite Sovereign Practice, Resistance, and Negotiation. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge (one among the chapters 1-9). A presentation of one of the assigned chapters, with a 6 slides ppt, at the exam is expected.
Students who did not attend classes are requested to prepare one more chapter from each of the two books above.

Contenuti

The course consists of 18 classes of two academic hours (45'+45') along the semester, from late september to the holiday pause in December. It consists of lectures and some seminar classes both with ppt.
The course will introduce the geographic context and academic setting of the discipline, a short history of western Asian archaeology focusing on tis relation with political and cultural developments in modern history and the theoretical and methodological developments it produced; It will then offer a survey of the main archaeological evidence (architecture, art and material culture) supporting the major experiences of socio-political complexity characterizing south-west Asia from the process of Neolithization starting in the 9th millennium BC to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 1st millennium BCE